Journal of Adolescent Research
    http://jar.sagepub.com "It's One of Those Things That You Do to Help the Family": Language Brokering and the Development of Immigrant Adolescents
    Lisa M. Dorner, Marjorie Faulstich Orellana and Rosa Jiménez Journal of Adolescent Research 2008; 23; 515 originally published online May 12, 2008; DOI: 10.1177/0743558408317563 The online version of this article can be found at: http://jar.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/23/5/515
    
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    “It’s One of Those Things That You Do to Help the Family”
    Lisa M. Dorner
    University of Missouri-St. Louis
    
    Journal of Adolescent Research Volume 23 Number 5 September 2008 515-543 © 2008 Sage Publications 10.1177/0743558408317563 http://jar.sagepub.com hosted at http://online.sagepub.com
    
    Language Brokering and the Development of Immigrant Adolescents
    
    Marjorie Faulstich Orellana Rosa Jiménez
    University of California, Los Angeles
    
    This article examines how immigrant adolescent development is shaped by the cultural and linguistic practice of language brokering. Framed by theories on interdependent/independent developmental scripts, the changing experiences and views of 12 Latino/a children of U.S. immigrants over 5 years were analyzed. It was found that translating is a relational, interdependent activity in which adolescents both help and receive help from family members. As adolescents, they extend this helping orientation beyond their household, but in these public spaces, they sometimes meet up with other developmental scripts. This article’s examination of brokering’s effects on immigrant adolescence leads to the discussion that one must consider the manner in which all adolescents and parents are negotiating independent and interdependent worlds. Keywords: adolescent immigrants; interdependence; language brokering; translating; interpreting
    
    Authors’ Note: This project primarily was supported by grants from the William T. Grant Foundation and the Culture, Brain, and Development Program at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (1 RO3 HD39510-01), the Spencer Foundation, the International Reading Association (Elva Knight Award), UCLA, and Northwestern University (NU) supported earlier components of this research program. The authors would like to thank members of the Culture, Language, and Literacy group at NU, and Rocio Barraza and Mouna Smail Mana of UCLA, for assistance with data processing and analysis. We also want to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions on this manuscript. Most important, muchísimas gracias to all the immigrant families and adolescents involved in our research projects. Please address correspondence to: Lisa M. Dorner, University of Missouri, St. Louis, Marillac Hall, One University Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63121-4499, lmdorner@yahoo.com. 515
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    Translating has always been another trait and/or role of my life; it helps me to identify myself. Most important to me is that translating is a major attribute of my relationship to my parents and family. Beatríz,1 e-mail (1999)
    
    Throughout the past decade we have been working and talking with immigrant youth and their families about their daily lives, responsibilities, language practices, and schooling. We have interviewed adolescents and emerging adults about their experiences of growing up as the children of immigrants in the United States and observed youth in their homes, classrooms, and other settings. In particular, we have studied the practice of language brokering, that is, when youth “interpret and translate between culturally and linguistically different people and mediate interactions in a variety of situations” (Tse, 1996, p. 226). For some time now, we have been struck by what Beatríz told us years ago, that language brokering is a major attribute of the relationship that she has developed with her family. It is our goal in this article to explore what this means, especially during what is often considered the hallmark period of conflict and change: adolescence. Traditional developmental theories as well as popular beliefs about teenagers in the United States view adolescence as a time of breaking away from the family and developing an independent, autonomous self (Blos, 1979; Collins & Laursen, 2004). But this script may not be the best model for understanding the development of children from nondominant groups or, for that matter, for understanding the full range of ways in which all people grow and develop. Through their work as translators for their families, which may increase over time as adolescents develop greater linguistic and cultural competencies, the children of immigrants may be brought closer to their families. Studying immigrant adolescence, therefore, may help us unpack processes of interdependence (Greenfield, 1992), as well as independence, and the various cultural beliefs and values that shape individuals and communities. In this article, we use the lens of independent/interdependent developmental scripts to examine how the work and relationships of language brokers change over time. We draw on a program of longitudinal, ethnographic research in the Chicago area to examine these questions: How do the translating responsibilities of the children of Latino/a immigrants change as they grow older? How do adolescents view these responsibilities? And how is language brokering implicated in their development?
    
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    Language Brokering and Development
    Though still largely overlooked, language brokering is beginning to spring up in scholarship across the United States, especially with the increased settlement of immigrant families. (As of the early 2000s, approximately 25% of all schoolchildren had at least one immigrant parent; Suárez-Orozco & Suárez-Orozco, 2001.) This developing body of work comes from several disciplines; the different approaches and various terms used to describe the phenomenon point to its complexity as a linguistic and social task. (For a discussion of these terms, see Dorner, Orellana, & Li-Grining, 2007). This research base has proposed different implications of language brokering for youth development; some work points to increased stress, while other studies suggest enhanced emotional and cognitive development. A great deal of this research focuses on the language broker as an individual, but such perspectives often divorce youth from the relationships and contexts in which language brokering takes place. Other studies, which do highlight the social dimensions, often examine language brokers at only one point in time.
    
    Psychological and Educational Studies Focused on Individual Outcomes
    The majority of research on language brokering has focused on its educational and psychological effects, both positive and negative. For instance, Valdés (2002) and Malakoff and Hakuta (1991) have claimed that bilingual interpreters, including children, develop greater metalinguistic awareness than do monolinguals. Some studies have suggested that this metalinguistic awareness, as well as other developed capacities, may lead to greater academic achievement (Acoach & Webb, 2004; Buriel, Perez, DeMent, Chavez, & Moran, 1998; Dorner et al., 2007; Tse, 1995). However, language brokering has also been associated with a decline in some children’s psychological well-being. Korean and Chinese (but not Mexican) adolescents from immigrant families who reported more brokering also had higher levels of internalization, that is, depression-anxiety, somatic complaints, and withdrawal (Chao, 2006). Likewise, language brokering has been linked to acculturative stress (McQuillan & Tse, 1995; Weisskirch & Alva, 2002). Studies focused on Asian immigrants in the United States indicated that entrepreneurial children have conflicted feelings about the work they do (Sun-Hee Park, 2002). All these studies consider important developmental outcomes in the cognitive, linguistic, and socioemotional domains, but as we have noted, generally divorce the individual from his or her context.
    
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    Social and Relational Studies Focused on Context
    In contrast, a few researchers have mapped the social and relational dimensions of language brokering. Valenzuela (1999) has described how translating, done especially by the daughters of Mexican immigrants, positions them as tutors and as advocates for others. This work argues that the eldest children in families, regardless of gender, often serve as surrogate parents, caring for younger siblings and sometimes helping parents make decisions about child rearing. Song (1999) has studied how the children of immigrants from Hong Kong help out their parents with family take-away restaurants in England, with translation playing a key part of their work. She has suggested that how siblings view each other in helping out the family shapes their assertion of cultural identities (Song, 1997). In earlier reports, we have examined how Latino/a parents and children work together to negotiate meaning (Orellana, Reynolds, Dorner, & Meza, 2003) and how this work accomplishes social goals for families and communities (Orellana, 2001; Orellana, Dorner, & Pulido, 2003). Relational aspects of translating have also been probed in larger quantitative studies; Chao (2006) has found that translating is positively related to respect for parents, net of other adolescent and family characteristics.
    
    Limitations to Extant Research
    Perhaps because language brokering is a new field of inquiry, there are limitations to the database. Most research has relied on retrospective interviews and small-scale surveys and on work with youth in limited contexts and at single points in time. In our program of research, we have tried to look closely at what is involved in language brokering and to consider how such experiences unfold over time—across contexts, relationships, and activities—by taking a longitudinal, qualitative approach, supplemented with quantitative survey analyses (e.g., Dorner et al., 2007; Orellana, Dorner, et al., 2003). Specifically for this study, we followed 12 children of immigrants from Latin America for more than 5 years, examining their development and views of translating as they grew from elementary school children to high school adolescents. This has allowed us to explore how language brokering changes over time, within relationships, and in relation to youths’ overall experiences of growing up.
    
    Theoretical Framework
    As increasing numbers of immigrants have settled in the United States over the past 20 years, scholars have studied the acculturation, academic
    
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    achievement, and language development of their children (e.g., Portes & Rumbaut, 2001; Rumbaut & Portes, 2001; Suárez-Orozco & Suárez-Orozco, 2001). Yet little research has taken a developmental view of immigrant families, and thus, we have a limited understanding of how relationships among family members change over time, as well as how such relationships shape the development of adolescents. At the same time, the broader body of developmental research on adolescents generally neglects the particular experiences of immigrant or minority families (Collins & Laursen, 2004; Greenfield & Cocking, 1992). Moreover, psychological research that does address nondominant groups often begins with assumptions about development that are based on White, middle-class, American norms. We argue here that we need to expand the developmental scripts that we use to understand adolescence for everyone, but especially when we consider the children of immigrants.
    
    Interdependence as a Developmental Script for Immigrant Families
    Cross-cultural work has demonstrated that much of the world holds belief systems about child development that differ from prevailing beliefs in the United States. These studies suggest that connectivity (see Fuligni, 2001) or collectivism (see Triandis, 1995) are primary ways by which non-Western individuals and cultures organize relationships, in contrast with the Western focus on individualism. In fact, Greenfield (1992) has argued that, worldwide, the dominant cultural script for development is interdependence. That is, in most cultures, one’s dependence on relationships with others are valued throughout development more so than one’s growing independence. We believe that it is important to expand our understanding of processes of development by considering nondominant scripts, as suggested by Greenfield and others (Greenfield & Cocking, 1992; Markus & Kitayama, 1991). However, we do not want to reinforce a dichotomization of groups and societies along an interdependent/independent divide. Rather, we suggest that all groups and societies develop in both independent and interdependent ways and that both scripts can be in operation. In any group, some contexts, tasks, situations, and relationships may emphasize interdependence, while others call for greater autonomy. That is, scripts can sometimes lie side by side, and given certain, immediate contextual factors (whether one is at home or work, for example) one or the other script may be more salient (Coon & Kemmelmeier, 2001; Schwartz, Zamboanga, Rodriguez, & Wang, 2007). Moreover, the cultural scripts that are used to interpret developmental
    
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    processes may bring either to the forefront. The main point here is that certain beliefs about development are usually more valued and idealized within a society or a group, or at particular points in time, and what the larger group overtly values has important implications for developmental processes and social relations. For instance, as youth from all cultures grow older they often assume, or are expected to assume, more responsibilities. But the timing of when children are viewed as responsible for different kinds of things, and the beliefs and understandings attached to what it means to be responsible differ across cultural communities (Rogoff, 2003). According to the Western psychological script for adolescent development, taking on more responsibility generally means becoming more independent. But taking on more responsibility also can be seen as a process of growing interdependence. Both crosscultural research and work with members of nondominant groups in the United States have found this to be the case. In a study of Mexican American families, Delgado-Gaitan (1992) argued that taking on more tasks in the household was not necessarily a move toward independence: “Rather, it is the other side of interdependence—responsibility for others” (p. 70). While autonomy generally highlights doing things for oneself, developing interdependence includes dependence on others as well as taking care of others, or being responsible for them (see also Pyke, 2000). Interdependence, then, may shape adolescent development in important ways. In her research on the history of children’s work, Zelizer (1994) has suggested that when children contribute to the family, they gain a greater sense of responsibility, more concern for others, and feelings of belonging. Research with immigrant youth in the United States has found that obligations to the family are not necessarily associated with psychological distress but, in some cases, with a greater belief in the importance and utility of education (Fuligni, Yip, & Tseng, 2002). Moreover, Chao (2006) has found that as language brokering increases, so does respect for parents. She argues that future studies should unpack the mechanisms at work when adolescents translate for parents, theorizing that such experiences can create opportunities for communication and trust within the family. They may also help brokers feel that they are important, valued, and essential to the family. In contrast, the independent cultural script sometimes endorsed by Western developmentalists implicitly suggests that taking on responsibilities such as translating may hinder adolescents’ normal development. Some research and theories (Buriel & De Ment, 1997; García Coll & Magnuson, 1997; Kibria, 1993; Menjívar, 2000) suggest that when parents depend on their children to speak for them in an English-speaking world, parental
    
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    authority is disrupted and role dissonance or role reversal results. Certainly, immigrant families, similar to all families, experience tensions, and feelings of conflict may be heightened during stressful activities, whether or not translation is involved. Greater conflicts are likely occur in specialized translation cases or, for example, within refugee families who may be settled in areas with little to no ethnic support network. However, our studies of brokering in the Chicago area have suggested that only a small portion of Latino/a youth’s responsibilties fall into the most difficult, tense, or stressful categories (Dorner et al., 2007; Orellana, Dorner, et al., 2003). Thus, we must ask, “In treating all translation experiences as a reversal of appropriate roles, are we working from the proper developmental script?” Miller (2005) has argued that what does and does not constitute work for children, as well as who can do what kinds of work, is contested worldwide. Viewed from an interdependent script, everyday language brokering may be seen as a normal expectation of the child-adult relationship rather than a parent ceding control of family decisions. In conclusion, we must consider that immigrant adolescents are influenced by various developmental scripts, especially as they grow older and come into contact with people who emphasize different aspects of interdependence/ independence. On the one hand, they experience the everyday interdependency of immigrant life, which includes translating experiences that many consider “normal”. On the other hand, the larger community in which they live may assume they are to become more independent or autonomous as they grow older, and thus may not value or recognize what they gain from such interdependent experiences. As they move into adolescence, then, the children of immigrants must negotiate these complex, overlapping, and sometimes contradictory expectations.
    
    Data and Method
    For this exploration of adolescents’ language brokering and development, we draw from longitudinal case studies of adolescents who were initially identified in elementary school as active translators for their immigrant families. The majority of the participants were chosen based on their answers to a survey given to 280 fifth and sixth graders at an urban public elementary school in Chicago and follow-up discussions to verify their broker status. (For more detail on the survey, see Dorner et al., 2007.) Six participants from nearby communities were identified through snowball sampling. The composition of this group was also informed by prior
    
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    research, which suggested that more girls than boys translate for their families and that such work often begins around the age of 10 or 11 years (Tse, 1995). Our original group of case study participants included 12 girls and 6 boys, and most were in the fifth or sixth grade at the start of the research project. A group of researchers led by the second author (and including the first author) spent approximately 2 years (2000-2003) as participant observers in the communities, schools, and homes of these 18 children. We documented everyday life and translating experiences by hanging out with participants after school; observing them in class; interviewing them, their parents, and teachers; and accompanying them on family outings, audiotaping translation situations wherever possible. We also asked participants to record their own translation experiences on cassette tapes and in journal entries. This work is documented in more than 2,500 pages of field notes, 140 journal entries, transcripts of 86 translation episodes, and transcripts of interviews with the adolescents, their teachers, and their parents.
    
    Follow-up Interviews
    In the 2004-2005 school year, we conducted semistructured interviews with 12 of our initial case study children to see if they continued to serve as active translators for their families, and if so, how they viewed changes in their brokering practices over time. (See Table 1 for a list of participants. We were not able to interview 6 of the original case studies as 2 had moved out of state, 2 had moved to unknown locations within Chicago, and we were not able to arrange interviews with the other 2 because of their busy school and work schedules.) We asked questions about the activities that shaped their daily lives, including increased homework demands of high school, outside work experiences, and new responsibilities at home. We also probed the changing dynamics of their families, asking about parents’ current work situations and acquisition of English, younger siblings’ need for homework help, and siblings’ assumption of translating responsibilities. Finally, we asked participants how their translating experiences and changing life circumstances were shaping their processes of growing up. All of the interviews were completed in English. The term immigrant glosses over a wide variation of experiences— including length of time in the United States, legal status, and social class background—and so we want to briefly unpack the background of the participants who we interviewed, who were all children of immigrants. All but
    
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    Table 1 Case Study Participants Interviewed in 2005
    Pseudonym Ashley Brianna Estela Jasmine Jessica Josh Katie Katrina María Miguel Nova Tony Grade 10th 10th 7th 9th 10th 10th 9th 10th 8th 9th 11th 10th Nature of Translating Highlighted by Participant Translates more often for family and others; shares tasks with elder brother Translates less for family Translates same amount for family; experiences stress/conflict during some encounters Translates same amount for family, more for others Translates same amount for family Translates less for family, more for others; shares tasks with younger sister Translates more, for recently arrived grandma Lets most of tasks fall to younger sister (Katie) Translates same amount for family, more for others Translates same amount for family, more for others Translates somewhat less for family, more of a shared task with mother; more for others Translates somewhat less often for family, more for others Birth Order Middle of 3 Eldest of 3 Eldest of 4 Eldest of 3 Middle of 3 Eldest of 2 Second eldest of 4 Eldest of 4 Eldest of 3 Eldest of 3 Eldest of 2 Eldest of 3
    
    one of the families were of rural Mexican origin from the states of Guanajuato, Durango, and Guerrero; Tony’s parents were from El Salvador and Ecuador. Most fathers immigrated before their wives; two fathers (those of María and Josh) arrived as early as the 1970s, and the others, along with most of the mothers, during the 1980s. Two boys (Nova and Miguel) were born in Mexico, while the rest of the case study participants and all of their younger siblings were born here. Thus, legal status varied both within and across households. At the time of our interviews, many fathers worked in landscaping or construction, others in the travel industry, and others as service workers at hotels or the nearby airport. A number of mothers offered home-based child care. More than half of the case study families owned their own homes, most of them renting out floors to extended family members or other immigrants.
    
    Data Analysis
    Data analysis involved an iterative process in which the three authors worked in consultation with each other. These conversations were important
    
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    for developing a shared and nuanced understanding of the data.2 Our iterative analysis process included three general steps. In our first step, we organized the data by creating domain charts (Spradley, 1980) that identified the adolescents’ named responsibilities at home, daily life activities, and current brokering experiences. Together, we discussed these charts, looking across cases for overall patterns in the nature of adolescents’ daily life experiences. We also used these to examine the nature of their brokering experiences: for whom, where, and how often they currently engaged in translation activities, as well as how they felt about this work. Finally, the charts helped us consider negative cases (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995), instances that did not fit into the patterns we began to identify for the majority. To further interrogate our data, the first author created longitudinal vignettes of each adolescent, following data analysis procedures recommended by Saldaña (2003). These snapshots included narrative descriptions of the participants’ past and current daily life routines, general household responsibilities, and recent brokering experiences. In writing these narratives, we closely examined each of the brokering experiences that participants named to identify who initiated it, who participated in it, in what ways did they participate, where the event took place (public/private), and how each adolescent experienced the event. Using a grounded theory approach (Strauss & Corbin, 1990), through multiple readings of the interviews as well as the domain charts and vignettes, we analyzed the data for patterns and themes. For example, we looked at how adolescents positioned themselves in relation to language brokering practices and their families, by considering their use of pronouns such as I and we. We identified the emotional valence that they seemed to attach to each brokering situation, looking closely at what happened in the few incidents that the adolescents reported as negative. And we considered how adolescents’ responsibilities had changed since they were younger. In our final step of analysis we returned to the data to code specifically for the following themes that emerged during the first and second steps of data analysis: family relationships and translating, adolescents’ responsibilities in and out of the home, and conflicts that sometimes emerged in translation encounters.
    
    Findings
    To demonstrate the various ways that youth’s lives have been shaped over the years by translating, we begin with excerpts from three of the case
    
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    study vignettes. We have chosen these three cases for the representative patterns that they demonstrate. Then, using examples from all of the case studies, we analyze in more detail the patterns found in the data, such as how translating is embedded in relationships, how it extends outside of the home during the adolescent years, and how adolescents view their work both as a natural part of helping out and also in tension, at times, with the dominant cultural script in which they live.
    
    Latino/a Language Brokers Becoming Adolescents: Jasmine, Ashley, and Miguel
    Jasmine. At the time of our interview, Jasmine was the eldest 15-year-old daughter of Mexican immigrants. She had two younger brothers: Jaime, who was in sixth grade, and Brendan, a kindergartener. The family was living in a two-bedroom basement apartment of a small Chicago bungalow in a mostly Latino/a immigrant neighborhood. Jasmine’s father was working in construction, but was no longer actively trying to start his own business, as he was when we first met the family. Jasmine’s mother was working fulltime at a factory, in contrast to a few years before, when she worked at home sometimes caring for a neighbor’s son. Recently, she had learned to drive, so she was not relying on public transportation or friends to get around any more. (We note these things to show that parents also develop in the United States over the years and that such developments may change their needs for translation.) Jasmine’s parents had both moved from a rural town in Mexico to the Chicago area around 1989, about 1 year before she was born. When Jasmine was in fifth grade, she translated on a weekly, and sometimes daily basis, mostly for her mother. This work seemed so interwoven into her daily life—trips to the pharmacy/minimart, translating a word here or there while watching television or opening the mail, helping her brother with his homework or at parent-teacher conferences—that Jasmine did not always recognize just how much brokering she did. Less often, she translated at doctor or dentist visits or for her father. At the time of our interview, Jasmine still translated for her parents on a regular basis; she felt it was about the same amount as 4 years ago. (Many of the eldest children in our study said that the amount of translating for parents had not changed much over the years.) Although Jasmine noted that she generally enjoyed helping out by translating, there had been moments of tension also.
    It kind of bothers me when I’m watching TV and my mom’s sitting right next to me, and I’m trying to pay attention, like what they’re saying [in] a movie
    
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    and something, when it’s really hard to understand, like what’s building up into the action. And then my mom’s like, “Qué dijo? What did they say?3 Qué está pasando? Qué están haciendo?” [What’s happening? What are they doing?] I’ll be like, “Mom, please let me listen and I’ll tell you.” She’s like “Ay, yo ya me voy a dormir porque tú no me explicas. Yo aquí estoy bien aburrida y no le entiendo nada.” [Fine, I’m going to go sleep because you won’t explain it to me. I’m here totally bored, and I don’t understand anything.] She’ll get frustrated. She’s like, “you guys want me to wait, ‘cause you guys understand everything.” It’s kind of funny. I’m trying to pay attention to the movie, but it’s kind of funny.
    
    Jasmine reported that she was helping strangers more now than she did in the past. For example, she told us that she recently translated for a Spanishspeaking woman at the laundromat who had trouble with the washing machine.
    Sometimes I do [translating] for some other people when I see they don’t know what’s going on. Like one time, we were at the laundromat and there was this lady and I think she didn’t know English. She was just standing there, and I was like “Why is this lady just standing there,” you know? I think that the coins were stuck to wash, and she was afraid to ask anyone, ‘cause I think she thought nobody would listen to her, ‘cause she didn’t know how to communicate. So I asked her, “Do you need any help?” I told her in Spanish. And she’s like, “oh yeah,” and she started telling me that the coins got stuck, and that she didn’t know who to ask and she thought that she had to pay again, but she didn’t have enough money. And I was like, okay, then, let me just go and talk to her [the laundromat attendant], you know, and I went and she told me that it was like broken or something.
    
    Similar to most of the other high school-aged participants, Jasmine said that she did not get nervous anymore and that her vocabulary is stronger. Jasmine and her mother both reported that her sixth-grade brother Jaime would not translate because he had not had much education in Spanish, but they thought that Brendan might be more like Jasmine and eventually broker for the family. This resonates with our earlier claim (Orellana, 2003) that who translates in a given family is partly shaped by families’ views of children’s abilities, particularly their language skills, as well as the child’s disposition to help. Ashley. At the time of our interview, Ashley was the 16-year-old middle daughter of Mexican immigrants. She had an older brother, José, by just 1 year, and a younger sister, who was in second grade. Similar to some other case study participants, Ashley’s family owned the two-story flat where
    
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    they lived, which was often rented out to other Mexican families or relatives. Ashley’s father was working in construction, and her mom mostly stayed at home while also caring for the first-grade boy who lived in the basement apartment. Ashley’s father immigrated to the Chicago area about 20 years ago; her mother arrived later in 1984, shortly before José was born. When we first selected Ashley for our study, we learned that her elder brother was originally the main family interpreter. However, lately José had become busier with his stuff as Ashley noted.
    Well, then when we first started [this research project], it was mostly my brother helping to translate, and now it’s more me . . . When people call on the phone, from the phone company or something like that, and they [my parents] need a translator, then I’ll help. When we go to doctor’s, I help.
    
    We have found that this passing down of the work (and sharing of it) is common in families with two elder children close in age. Although her parents were turning to Ashley first these days with difficult questions, such as new insurance policies from work, when she did not understand something she solicited help from José: “Well, sometimes I forget, how to translate, like, maybe one word to another. Like, I can’t really remember what it means, and stuff like that . . . [and so] I ask my brother for help.” At these times, the whole family sometimes became involved in the interpretation experience, as described in more detail next. Like Jasmine, Ashley reported that she was doing more translation outside the home these days, for instance, at school or at the neighborhood bus stop. Ashley was also translating more for extended relatives. She believed that this had brought her closer to the whole family and the world of adults.
    Because sometimes I help my uncles and aunts when they need help. ‘Cause mostly my cousins are grown up, they’re married, they’re away from home . . . And sometimes they [my aunts and uncles] need help with some papers, and they come to us, to me and my brother, for help . . . I like it a lot because I get to talk more to them, and I’m not so embarrassed to be around them anymore. ‘Cause at first, I was like, what if they’re saying something about me? Like I [didn’t] really feel comfortable, like I [didn’t] really know that much. But now I do, ‘cause I talk to them more.
    
    In addition, at a recent report card pickup day, Ashley helped parents find their way around the school and explained the various courses listed on their children’s report cards. Her affiliation with ROTC at school facilitated this. She said the following.
    
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    It’s fun, you get to do a lot of things, you get to help out. Sometimes, on Saturdays, they need help, because sometimes some families go there [to school], to check out the place, so they want somebody that knows a little bit more about, to go around the school sometimes.
    
    In the above examples, Ashley felt proud that she could help elderly Spanish speakers looking for assistance. However, in other instances translating outside of the home, she felt that adults sometimes viewed her with suspicion. At a car dealership, for instance, at which Ashley, her brother, and a cousin all helped complete a transaction, Ashley distrusted the mannerisms of the employees.
    Because we were doing some stuff and every time, I would be, I would be talking to my parents, and they would be talking to them, and just looking at us, like they were saying something about us. And I didn’t feel that comfortable there.
    
    Miguel. At the time of our interview, 15-year-old Miguel lived in an apartment in a suburb of Chicago with his mother, father, two younger siblings, Diana (second grader), Roberto (first grader), and an uncle. Miguel’s father worked to repair power lines after heavy storms, and his mother provided daily child care for a toddler from the neighborhood. Unlike most of the case study participants, Miguel was born in Mexico; he and his parents first arrived in Phoenix, Arizona, when he was 2 years old. They had been in the Chicago area for about 10 years. Both of Miguel’s parents depended on him for a variety of things, perhaps because he was the eldest child, older than his siblings by 7 years. As he had grown older, Miguel noted, “I end up translating more than I used to . . . ‘cause there’s more stuff to do around the house.” He also said it had become easier, but that the nature of the translating was mostly the same as before.
    The last thing I think I did was for [school parent-teacher] conferences—I translated. And like, she [mom] changed the plan for the phone, so we could get more calls, so I had to call the company and tell them about it. And then, like, we get bills in the mail and, say, if we want some changes—I have to read that. And then like my dad’s car, the new sticker [car registration], and when you go take the car to test [for emissions].
    
    Miguel also mentioned that he used to read storybooks to his younger brother Roberto, but now that he was in school, Roberto was supposed to read a book by himself. Also, because both his younger siblings, Roberto and Diana, were in a dual language program and their reading homework was in Spanish, their mother often read with them.
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    Miguel also translated in a variety of ways outside of the house, at parentteacher conferences and for neighbors. Translating did not only involve words; Miguel’s father had recently asked him to read maps, for example, to figure out how to drive to the car-emissions testing site. Similar to other students, Miguel mentioned that he did more translating during the summer, because he was at home more. He also noted that Diana, even though she was only in second grade, had begun to translate at school for their mom. Besides a full load of college preparatory classes at school, Miguel was taking “Spanish for Native Speakers.” Like three other case study participants, Miguel said this class was helping him to translate better for his parents and to correct his siblings’ homework in Spanish. He talked about what he had gained from being a translator.
    It made me put my mind more into studying like two languages other than just one . . . I decided to take Spanish instead of two English classes . . . so I could learn how to write it, so I know what a word is, and what if they have accents, how to say it in Spanish, how to say it with an accent and stuff.
    
    Although some children of immigrants resist, reject, or lose their heritage language or culture as they assimilate (Portes & Rumbaut, 2001), we have found that being translators sometimes pulls youth closer to their cultural and linguistic heritage. In this case, even though Miguel had been translating for years, he recognized that he was never trained in formal, written Spanish grammar and thus wanted to improve on his knowledge, for even better translating and understanding.
    
    Translating for the Family: A Practice Embedded in Relationships
    As illustrated in these vignettes, the most recent translating events that participants reported included translating official documents from parents’ places of employment, siblings’ homework assignments, information from school, car emissions testing notices, credit card offers, utility bills, and television/movies. This work took place at banks, schools, doctors’ offices, hospitals, pharmacy/minimarts, laundromats, car dealerships, and a variety of public service offices. It was done for siblings, neighbors, strangers, friends, and store clerks, often at the request of their parents. Most of the activities listed by the language brokers meant that they had to recognize the needs and interests of their family members. That is, they leveraged their own skills (of reading, writing, and speaking English and
    
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    Spanish) to benefit others. In the majority of translating activities, the adolescents did not act alone. Rather, many members of the family—especially parents, but also siblings and other adult relatives—pitched in to make sense of the tasks. For instance, Sra. Vargas, the mother of two teenage daughters, Katie and Katrina, and two younger children, talked about how she had used her own increasing English abilities in concert with her daughters’ to help her own mother navigate nearby stores and public service institutions. Similarly, Nova described how he and his mother, who had acquired additional English skills over the years, would work together to translate documents. These data suggest that language brokering is a practice embedded in relationships. In describing the purchase of a truck with his family, Josh emphasized shared ownership in this transaction by his choice of pronouns: “We bought the truck in 2000 and we were only getting $2,000 back for the trade-in, which is real bad” [emphases ours]. When Josh described that he thought the dealership unfairly treated his family because they were Mexican, he included himself as a key part of the exchange: “I mean we are there; we are customers.” Tony, too, in describing how his whole family worked together to open a restaurant last year, included himself with his parents as owners: “We owned a restaurant last year . . . Last year when we started, we had the whole thing, and I worked there every day after school.” Tony’s ownership in this project extended to its eventual failure, when the building that housed the restaurant was sold: “We’re just trying to recover the losses we had from there” [emphases ours]. Translating was sometimes an even more extensively shared family event, especially for families with siblings close in age. Josh, for example, had a sister just 2 years younger, who he surmised was doing more translating than he at this point, perhaps because Marcia was more willing and Josh’s parents believed she was better at it.
    Yeah, ‘cause when I started out translating, I used to do more translating, back then, than now. Because now me and my sister, we share translating. When I don’t understand a word, I tell my sister to come and help me, “hey, I am trying to understand this.”
    
    The same was true for Ashley and her brother, as discussed above. The following excerpt, in which Ashley described how she and José translated insurance information for their father, demonstrates how siblings work together and how parents help out, too; they are not just the passive recipients of translations.
    
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    A (Ashley): Well, they [my parents] just want to know, what kind of benefits were in it, what would they help with, like what does it cover, and stuff like that. And I would just tell them what it said in the booklets and stuff like that . . . Well, sometimes I couldn’t figure out how to translate some of the stuff. Like, one part would be that he would get a benefit, from, I’m not sure what it was, but something, from his work, and I couldn’t translate it. I couldn’t figure out how to explain it to them. So I tried different ways, but they didn’t understand it. I (author): And you tried a couple of ways, and how did you know your parents didn’t understand? A: ‘Cause they’re like: are you sure that’s what it says? And I’m like, “yeah.” And I was thinking like, well, what if I say it this way, they might understand it better. But at the end, we figured it out. I: And how did you do that? How did you figure it out? A: I just did it different ways. Then I figured it out; then I remembered a few things; then I would just put them all together. They would figure it out, too. I: Did they help you figure it out, do you think? A: Yes. ‘Cause I was trying to figure it out, like that, by myself, [and they would say:] “So, what you’re trying to say is, it would do this or that?” And I’m like, “yes.”
    
    Even when parents do not speak much English, they often support children in translation tasks. As Ashley described, her parents generally noticed when she was struggling with words or ideas, and they often used their knowledge of the issue at hand, supplied suggestions, and negotiated meaning with her. In addition, she turned to her experienced language broker brother when she got stuck. Together, parents, language brokers, and siblings figure out the meaning and significance of their tasks at hand. These data demonstrate how translation events can become mutually beneficial zones of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978), which promote interdependent processes of learning and development. In a few cases (especially Miguel, María, and Estela), the participants we interviewed were considerably older than their siblings. These adolescents appeared to do more extensive kinds of translating without much help from their siblings. In families with two elder children close in age (especially José/Ashley, Katrina/Katie, and Josh/Marcia), both the siblings and the parents often worked together to negotiate translation tasks. Sometimes, as the eldest child became busier with outside responsibilities or moved away from home, the second child took on more brokering, but still turned to the eldest for assistance, when possible. This shared nature of language brokering provided opportunities for adolescents to engage with their families’
    
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    activities and provide linguistic support. Such occasions might well draw adolescents closer to their families during an otherwise turbulent period of development.
    
    “Helping Out” and Feeling Responsible
    One of the most salient findings from the earlier stages of our research was the degree to which participants framed their brokering work as contributions to their families. Like Tse (1995), we found that children commented on the fact that their work was appreciated by others and that they were glad that they could help out their families. Early in the study, they wrote the following in their journals.
    We went all the way to 14th Street for an outdoor market. My dad wanted to buy some shoes for work so I had to ask a guy who sells them if he had [some] in my dad’s size. I felt really good about it because he got a good deal on them. (Miguel, 7th grade, 2002) Well, today my mom asked me to ask the bus driver what street did we have to get off, if we want to go to West Belton. The CTA [Chicago Transit Authority] driver was kind and nice to say, “Oh you have to get off after Western on the street Oakland.” I said “thank you” and went to tell my mom. I felt nervous to ask him, but then it felt helpful for me. It felt nice I could help someone. (Jasmine, 6th grade, 2001)
    
    Four years later, this helping orientation was still evident in the talk of many of these participants. In his follow-up interview, Tony told us of writing a letter in English for his grandfather: “It made me feel good. I helped.” When asked how he felt about cleaning and other expectations for his work at home, Tony said, “I think it’s fair. I have to help out. I can’t just be here, come home and do nothing and go to sleep. I have to help out.” Josh said, “Even if I don’t like it, I still have to do it because I have to help my parents out, because they are working and stuff like that and they can’t do it all.” Katie and Katrina talked in a nonchalant way about how they had helped out their mom with translating and other household tasks. When one elder daughter was not home, the other said she would take over changing diapers, feeding, and cleaning up toys for their new baby sister. Boys, almost as much as girls, talked about helping with cooking and cleaning, echoing Miller’s (2005) finding that boys in mother-headed, Hispanic, and African American households may do more domestic work than do boys from other families. This is evident from the following words of Nova.
    
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    You know, my mom gets here at 4:30 or sometimes 5:00 and so I clean the house. I keep it clean. Sometimes I make food for my sister or something like that . . . I wouldn’t call it work ‘cause, you know, it’s one of those things that you do to help the family.
    
    He continued, talking about household responsibilities as a way of helping out.
    I’m the oldest; I’m supposed to do it. I don’t say anything about it; I just do it, you know. If I’m gonna’ help my mom with something, I’m just gonna’ do it, because my mom, she does her job and I just do my job to help.
    
    Adolescents’ talk revealed a marked sense of shared responsibility and interdependence that expanded as children grew older. We suggest here that translating and the everyday contributions that the children of immigrants make to their households engenders a helping orientation and sense of responsibility for others. At the same time, brokering may be reinforced by the interdependent cultural script that may predominate in some immigrant households. In other words, unlike the typical chores completed by many middle-class U.S. adolescents—which are sometimes, perhaps mistakenly, seen to have little value (see Miller, 2005)—these household contributions are a key part of developing a particular, interdependent sense of responsibility in immigrant adolescents that emerges both within the family and in their expanding lives.
    
    Translating for Others: A Practice That Extends Out of Home
    As we have seen, translating is an activity that occurs extensively in immigrant households, primarily between family members. But as bilingual adolescents grow older and enter high school, their spheres of movement expand. As their extracurricular activities increase, many spend more time outside of the house, in clubs or sports, working at various places of employment, and getting themselves to and from school. Adolescents themselves may choose to spend more time out of the house at these activities or with friends, and some are actually sent out more by their families, like Jasmine whose responsibilities to grocery shop for the family increased as she got older. We have found that as adolescents’ spheres of movement expand, so do their spheres of translation. We see evidence of the language brokers extending their helping orientation outward, providing translation
    
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    services not only for their immediate families but also for extended family, neighbors, strangers, and friends. A number of the participants spoke about how they felt more confident in their translating abilities these days. It had become easier over the years and they would get less nervous. As Tony put it, “I learned to talk to people more freely.” Earlier, we noted that Ashley felt more comfortable in the realm of adults as she was translating more for extended relatives. A few other students talked about translating for their extended family back home in Mexico or Central America. Tony, Jasmine, and María mentioned that their cousins and other relatives would often ask them how to say particular words in English, in e-mail correspondences, letters, and during visits to their home countries. Such transactions may give adolescents an immediate way to connect with family members who they do not see very often and a boost of confidence in being a “teacher” of U.S. language and culture. This instructional form of translating happens in other places as well: A number of participants mentioned that their peers at school would sometimes ask for help on school-oriented language tasks and homework. Josh noted how cool it was to help older, English-dominant students at school with their Spanish assignments. (Like Miguel, he was taking a class to improve his knowledge of written Spanish and grammar, but his class included both native and nonnative speakers). Around immigrant neighborhoods, other adults (neighbors as well as strangers) often depended on adolescents, especially when their own children or family members were not available. These adult immigrants seemed to mark adolescents as bilingual and knowledgeable about the English language and U.S. customs, just as parents did. Ashley and others spoke about translating for strangers at bus stops, providing directions on how to get around the city. Tony’s mother asked him to accompany a neighbor (a very recent immigrant) to the county hospital for a magnetic resonance imaging scan, and Nova mentioned befriending and helping a number of recent immigrants at his high school. However, this kind of help does not extend only to immigrants. When at a Mexican bakery, María’s mother noticed an English speaker having trouble communicating with the Mexican clerk, and so she asked María to help him. Both strangers and parents, then, asked adolescents to help, and sometimes they, themselves, volunteered. Not all the people that adolescents encountered in their outside excursions recognized or validated their skills, however. In five instances, participants told us about attitudes they encountered, which they described as racist: Josh and Ashley at car dealerships (both mentioned earlier), Jasmine with a white dude (adult) at school who was making fun of Mexican
    
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    accents, Nova when helping a friend at a doctor’s office, and Estela, when she and her friends were pulled over by the police. In these occurrences, the adolescents encountered a disparaging attitude from people for whom they could have translated. We do not know whether the adults’ negative attitudes were shaped by their views of immigrants, Mexicans, adolescents, or language brokers, but we do know that such situations made the adolescents feel uncomfortable and unwelcome, which stands in contrast to how proud they usually felt when they could help out.
    
    Language Brokering and Conflicts
    Although many participants discussed their development of an interdependent, helping orientation in positive ways, these adolescents did not always portray their brokering experiences as conflict free. They viewed some translating encounters as inconvenient and others as more problematic. Following, we describe some of these situations in detail, noting that we found little suggestion that the everyday instances of translating led to intense role reversal, even if some circumstances were perceived as more difficult. (For further discussion on our arguments regarding role reversal, see Dorner et al., 2007; Orellana, Dorner, et al., 2003.) First, participants occasionally described moments of tension and annoyance in language brokering situations. For example, Katie laughed as she talked about helping her sometimes impatient mother find information on the Internet. A number of language brokers spoke as Jasmine did, about being annoyed at interruptions during movies or television shows. Josh said it bothered him when his uncle, who shared his bedroom, asked him questions as he was trying to fall asleep. (However, Josh said he nonetheless helped his uncle because he’s family.) Although the teenagers tended to laugh off these episodes—perhaps downplaying conflict in interviews with us—they told us that their elders were sometimes impatient or frustrated. This may be a sign that their parents did not similarly laugh off the situations, though neither parents nor children ever spoke of these sorts of situations leading to parent-child role reversal. Next, some participants alluded to conflicts about language use that emerged in certain translation encounters. Ashley told us that sometimes she and her brother would slip into English, which their mom disliked.
    Yeah, sometimes we [my mom and I] talk in Spanish and all of a sudden I start going in English. And sometimes it’s me and my brother talking English and she starts listening . . . Sometimes we’re talking in English, and my mom’s like: “In this house you speak Spanish, so I can understand everything.”
    
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    Estela described to us her and her mother’s communication challenges, given her greater comfort with English and her mother’s greater facility with Spanish.
    That’s the thing, that I can’t say what I feel in Spanish. I have to say it in English. And that’s why [my mom] gets mad, because I can’t say what I feel in Spanish to her, and I say everything in English. And then she thinks I’m making it up, but then I’m not. I don’t know; it’s just ‘cause sometimes I like to say stuff [in English]. Like, right now, I couldn’t say what I’m saying right now in Spanish, because it’s different. I can express myself better in English.
    
    Estela said that she found it easier to speak about certain issues in English and this frustrated her mother, who then could not fully understand her daughter. Sometimes adolescents found themselves slipping into English, and other times, they did not feel they had the skills to fully communicate in (or translate into) Spanish, situations that parents sometimes read as their children becoming too American or as too rejecting of their own heritage/language. Estela’s household was one where we did see hints of more intense parent-child conflict. Although this conflict often erupted around language issues, it was not always because of them. On several occasions when we talked with Estela and her mother, Estela ended up in tears, claiming frustration about how her mother did not understand her. Her mother, on the other hand, talked with us extensively about her worries: concerns about Estela’s friendship choices and fears of teen pregnancy and gang involvement. Lacking facility in the English language and having to depend on her daughter to function in this outside world may have exacerbated these fears and made communication about difficult issues more challenging. But even without a language barrier, these tensions would likely have existed, having roots in much larger societal conditions, conditions and fears that many low-income families experience. Third, adolescents sometimes seemed caught between feelings of responsibility for their families and for their new work or interests outside the home. These tensions are ones that many teenagers experience as they grow up, but, again, in immigrant families, they may surface around language brokering expectations. For example, because she had to take extra classes to make up for failing freshman year, Brianna did not get home from school until 7:00 p.m. She said that because she was not home a lot, she translated less than before. Other students got home late because they had joined various before- and after-school activities and sport teams. María specifically talked about how it felt to balance the pressure of school demands versus her mother’s needs.
    
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    Cause now, like, she wants me to help her around the house a lot more. I’m like, I can’t, ‘cause I have [homework]; I don’t finish my homework, ‘cause I get more homework . . . and she’s like, “well, you gotta help me around the house” and like, well, I have to do my homework.
    
    This suggests that some of the tension that the adolescent children of immigrants may experience comes from the balancing act that they must do between their increased responsibilities and interests outside of the home and their parents’ continued reliance on them at home. (See Fuligni et al., 2002 for more on the impact of family obligations on development.) Finally, it is important to look at the tensions that arise in interactions outside of homes as well as within them and at the conflicts that youth experience when they navigate spaces that are often defined by White, middle-class norms. In these spaces, immigrant adolescents encounter assumptions that others have about them and their families. That is, their work often takes place within a politically charged landscape in which immigrants can be seen as threats to the status quo. We have mentioned throughout the text various episodes where teenagers felt uncomfortable because they perceived racist attitudes, as when Ashley and Josh helped their parents to buy cars. At the car dealership, the strange looks that Ashley perceived could be an indication that the salespeople felt uncomfortable talking with a child/teenager about a car sale. They might also index attitudes toward immigrants or Mexicans, as Josh believed. Nova was specifically called on to help at a health clinic, where a new immigrant friend felt discriminated against for his inability to speak English well. Nova explained his experience in this way, an indication that he was aware of the possibility of racial and linguistic profiling.
    I think it was one of those people that are kind of like racist about, you know, stuff like that. And, um, a friend of mine, that got here like a year ago, and, um, he knows English but not that well. And so then he was gonna make a call to uh, to someone, I think it was something about medical stuff, too. So, then he called, right? And so he was asking for someone in Spanish, so they put him on hold for like 30 minutes for just that. And we knew the actual place that he was calling—we knew that they had a lot of people that speak Spanish. So, then I was like, okay, that’s kind of, kind of weird. So then we, he decided to just hang up [and go there] . . . So we went and so we saw all these, all these, you know, Latinos [working there], so we were like, okay, you know, what’s going on? And so then he started talking to this guy, and he was like “Yeah, I called like an hour ago and they put me on hold for like 30 minutes and I never got anyone.” And so then he, the guy, told him that,
    
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    you know, they were too busy or something like that. So I was like, okay, that’s not one of the reasons you put someone on hold for like 30 minutes. And, you know, not answering to their calls. So then after that, he told me about all this stuff that they told him. I thought it was just BS, you know.
    
    Discussion
    Listening to the adolescent children of immigrants and considering their experiences in relation to both dominant and nondominant cultural scripts about development bring to light three important points that deserve further reflection and research. First, when considering the developmental implications of language brokering, we must remember that relationships matter. Translating and interpreting are not solitary activities; they are social and relational events in which families engage together and in relation to society. When we read of a child translator in the daily news, we may imagine a child or adolescent, alone, taking on an adult task, such as reading an important doctor’s note to her mother. But we have found that the parents are typically active participants in these kinds of events, and as we have demonstrated, mothers and fathers work together with their children to construct the meaning of such notes. Viewed in this way, we hypothesize that how parents and siblings communicate and work together matter for the developmental possibilities of brokering on linguistic, cultural, and psychosocial dimensions, especially as children reach adolescence. A relational perspective on language brokering is also important to consider with regard to the dominant developmental scripts of adolescence. Rather than seeing this period as a time of breaking away from one’s family, we can examine it as one in which adolescents are both making their own way in the world and developing closer ties to their families. Ashley suggested that through translating for her aunts and uncles, adolescents are, in fact, apprenticed into the adult world. Language brokering may also foster an interest in heritage language and culture, as seen in the desires that Miguel, Josh, and others expressed to improve their own knowledge of Spanish. Second, family composition and experiences matter, too. In this study, many of the eldest participants said that they were doing about the same amount of translating as when they were younger. However, in families that had two elder siblings close in age (e.g., José/Ashley, Josh/Marcia), the younger of the two had currently assumed more translating responsibilities. On the other hand, some youth, like Nova and Tony, reported doing less because their parents needed less help, having acquired more English. But
    
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    Katie reported doing more, because a grandmother had just moved in. Thus, while some might hypothesize that all brokers assume fewer translation responsibilities as they age, because of less interest in the family or time to take on the work, these typical adolescent reasons for diminishing translation work were not voiced by the participants in our study. In short, as children grow up and change, so do their family members. In immigrant families, younger children sometimes take over the work of older siblings if they are so inclined and parents view them as having the proper skills. Elder pairs of siblings may also work together to solve translation tasks. Likewise, parents are developing new skills, and family members are moving in and out. The need for and amount of translation in a family is simply not static and such changes need to be taken into account in future work. Finally, we believe it is important to continue questioning what is normal or normative development for the children of immigrants (and for all youth). We have been struck by the nonchalant attitude of many language brokers when we have asked them about their translation work; some of them have looked at us askance when we talked about studying the practice, apparently because they did not think that it was something so remarkable to be worthy of analysis. Many language brokers in the context that we have studied reminded us that most translating, for them, is an everyday, normal activity whereby they help their family. Sometimes they described this everyday normalcy as a minor inconvenience, other times as a disagreement over language use and only rarely as stressful events. It was so woven into their lives, that these youth, given their and their families’ particular situations and contexts, rarely viewed brokering as a reversal of roles. And, as discussed earlier, we found that immigrant parents rarely depended entirely on their children; for the most part, translating is a shared, family activity embedded in relationships. Not only does this study underscore the importance of considering normative development from adolescent perspectives but it also challenges us to consider more fully how interdependent scripts are at work in all families. We are not alone in this argument. With the rise of family system theories, the interdependence among the roles and functions of all family members, and the direct and indirect influences of family members and the social systems within which they are embedded, are gaining precedence. For example, Cicirelli (1995) has highlighted the importance of siblings as a significant influence in children’s development. Sameroff’s (1994) transactional model of child development underscores that developmental or socialization outcomes are not a product of some initial characteristics or behavior of either parent or child. Rather, they are the result of the continuous interplay between
    
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    the child, her or his context, and relationships over time. Thus, as we push our studies of adolescence further, we should consider both how teenagers break away and how they help out their families and others in the process of growing up. In turn, we should also consider how adolescents shape the development of their parents, other relatives, and even their communities at large.
    
    Conclusion
    In this study, we have had the opportunity to consider how language brokers change as they enter adolescence, how teenagers view their translation responsibilities, and how the work of language brokering is related to development. We have heard from adolescents themselves that they were translating and interpreting more often for strangers and extended relatives, both when parents or other adults had asked them to do so and when they had volunteered. They explained that translating had gotten easier over the years. They were less nervous now. In general, they were glad that they could help out. But they sometimes viewed language brokering as an inconvenience, and other times they experienced some tension surrounding it. They suggested that some adults viewed them as knowledgeable and capable helpers, but others looked at them with suspicion and made them feel uncomfortable. In conclusion, these adolescents showed us how they were learning to live— guided by both, and in between, interdependent and independent scripts.
    
    Notes
    1. All names are pseudonyms, most of them chosen by the participants themselves. 2. The first two authors have worked closely with the case study youth for more than 5 years, preparing multiple reports on this Chicago-area program of research. The third author joined the team during data collection and analysis for this particular article, contributing valuable insights based on her own experiences as a child language broker. We discuss our processes of group ethnography in other work (Dorner, Orellana, Meza, & Pulido, 2002; Orellana, Dorner, et al., 2003). 3. In this case, Jasmine translated her own words recounting the episode (Qué dijo?) into English (What did they say?). In the remainder of this excerpt, and throughout the article, for any text spoken in Spanish, we offer our own translation, presented in italics and brackets.
    
    References
    Acoach, C. L., & Webb, L. M. (2004). The influence of language brokering on Hispanic teenagers’ acculturation, academic performance, and nonverbal decoding skills: A preliminary study. Howard Journal of Communication, 15, 1-19.
    
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    Lisa M. Dorner is a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy and will start a position as assistant professor of Educational Psychology, Research and Evaluation at University of Missouri St. Louis in July, 2008. Her research interests include immigrant childhoods, policy implementation, and bilingual education. Marjorie Faulstich Orellana is an associate professor of education at the University of California, Los Angeles. She takes a sociocultural approach to the study of language, literacy, and learning in urban, immigrant communities. Rosa Jiménez is a doctoral student in education at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research interests include literacy and identity development with Latino/a immigrant youth, critical pedagogy, and social justice education.
    
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